Blacks for Bush

  Fringe Benefits : Debunk Teachers Unions Myths about Teachers Pay

The average teacher, according to the AFT, earned $43,250 during the 2000–01 school year, compared with an average of $52,664 for mid-level accountants; $71,155 for computer system analysts; $74,920 for engineers; and $82,712 for attorneys.

Where, one wonders, are the comparisons with journalists, registered nurses, assistant district attorneys, FBI agents, military officers, and other not-so-highly compensated professionals and public-sector employees? Shouldn’t the average pay of a high-school English teacher be compared with that of writers and editors? One could make a case that the salaries of high-school physics or calculus teachers should bear some resemblance to those of computer system analysts, but does the AFT believe that the appropriate compensation benchmarks for 3rd-grade teachers are the salaries of engineers or attorneys?

One facet of teaching that the NEA and AFT, in their data and in their public pronouncements, routinely fail to account for is the shorter workday and work year. In public schools, the median number of school days is 180 per year. Add half-a-dozen or so workdays for parent conferences, professional development, and planning, and the annual work year for most teachers is still shorter than 190 days. By comparison, an accountant or lawyer with two weeks of paid vacation and ten holidays or personal days will work 240 days annually—nearly 30 percent more days per year than public school teachers.

The typical teacher also has a shorter on-site workday than most other professionals. On average, teachers report being in school for fewer than 38 hours per week. This number rises to 40 hours if largely voluntary after-school activities such as coaching or club sponsorship are included. In fact, language limiting the number of hours that teachers are required to be in school is common in their collective-bargaining agreements, particularly in urban school districts. In the just-expired New York City teachers’ contract, the contractual workday was just 6 hours and 20 minutes (including a 50-minute duty-free lunch). The new contract extends the workday by 20 minutes. In Chicago, the limit is 6 hours and 45 minutes, including a 45-minute duty-free lunch.

And you are probably saying what does this has to do with me as a black american. Well teacher salaries are the main cost of education, teachers unions have forced the democrats to verbally take back their votes for the No Child Left Behind Act which was specifically designed to help the poorest and least served by these teachers unions.